Ceefax service to end after 38 years

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It was once considered cutting-edge technology but Ceefax’s pixelated pages
will disappear from TV screens today, buried by the internet and the digital
switchover.

The BBC teletext service, launched in 1974, has already quietly slipped from
most of the country’s televisions as the digital switchover rolled through
the country, but tomorrow it will officially disappear as the last anaologue
TV signal is switched off in Northern Ireland.

The service’s demise is announced on Ceefax’s front page with the simple
message: “1974 – 2012. Thanks for watching”, but fans have been more
nostalgic in their tributes. Sir John Major, known to check